Ahwatukee Resident Works to Grow Heart Arteries in Lab

Ahwatukee resident and University of Arizona junior Corina MacIsaac spent her entire summer in a lab coat on campus. What was she doing there? Just working on a tissue engineering vascular graft project that grows arteries in a lab with hopes of being able to change the way we treat heart disease.

According to the Ahwatukee Foothills News (AFN), MacIsaac found out about the field of tissue engineering during a career research project she conducted while attending Horizon Community Learning Center. The research project aims to create an alternative treatment for heart disease and is affiliated with the university’s Undergraduate Biology Research Program (UBRP).

“Instead of using a blood vessel from a donor or patient’s body to bypass blocked coronary arteries, this lab is working to grow coronary arteries directly in the lab,” MacIsaac told AFN. “The development of a lab-grown vascular substitute will help to eliminate problems of bypass graft failure and compliance mismatch present in the current treatment.”

MacIsaac plans to stay in the lab throughout the remainder of her college years, and is pursuing a double major in biomedical engineering and physiology and a minor in mathematics, the paper said.